// Tutorial //

How To Install PowerDNS on CentOS 6.3 x64

Published on March 18, 2013

Developer and author at DigitalOcean.

How To Install PowerDNS on CentOS 6.3 x64

Status: Deprecated

This article covers a version of CentOS that is no longer supported. If you are currently operating a server running CentOS 6, we highly recommend upgrading or migrating to a supported version of CentOS.

Reason: CentOS 6 reached end of life (EOL) on November 30th, 2020 and no longer receives security patches or updates. For this reason, this guide is no longer maintained.

See Instead:
This guide might still be useful as a reference, but may not work on other CentOS releases. If available, we strongly recommend using a guide written for the version of CentOS you are using.

Step 1 - Install REMI and EPEL Repositories and Packages

rpm -ivh http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm
rpm -ivh http://rpms.famillecollet.com/enterprise/remi-release-6.rpm
yum -y install php php-mcrypt php-pdo php-mysql pdns pdns-backend-mysql mysql-server httpd

Step 2 - Create a Database and Username

service mysqld start
service httpd start
mysqladmin create powerdns

Make sure to select your own password below:

mysql -Bse "create user 'powerdns'@'localhost' identified by 'password'"
mysql -Bse "grant all privileges on powerdns.* to 'powerdns'@'localhost'"

Step 3 - Create PowerDNS databases and tables:

Start mysql console with "mysql"

mysql> use powerdns;

CREATE TABLE domains (
id INT auto_increment,
name VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
master VARCHAR(128) DEFAULT NULL,
last_check INT DEFAULT NULL,
type VARCHAR(6) NOT NULL,
notified_serial INT DEFAULT NULL,
account VARCHAR(40) DEFAULT NULL,
primary key (id)
);

CREATE UNIQUE INDEX name_index ON domains(name);

CREATE TABLE records (
id INT auto_increment,
domain_id INT DEFAULT NULL,
name VARCHAR(255) DEFAULT NULL,
type VARCHAR(6) DEFAULT NULL,
content VARCHAR(255) DEFAULT NULL,
ttl INT DEFAULT NULL,
prio INT DEFAULT NULL,
change_date INT DEFAULT NULL,
primary key(id)
);

CREATE INDEX rec_name_index ON records(name);
CREATE INDEX nametype_index ON records(name,type);
CREATE INDEX domain_id ON records(domain_id);

CREATE TABLE supermasters (
ip VARCHAR(25) NOT NULL,
nameserver VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
account VARCHAR(40) DEFAULT NULL
);

Exit mysql console by typing "exit":

mysql> exit

Step 4 - Install PowerAdmin

cd /root 
wget https://github.com/downloads/poweradmin/poweradmin/poweradmin-2.1.6.tgz
tar xvfz poweradmin-2.1.6.tgz
cd poweradmin-2.1.6/inc
mv config-me.inc.php config.inc.php

Edit config.inc.php and make sure to change password you've specified in Step 2:

nano config.inc.php

Modify db_pass and session_key to your own values:

$db_host                = 'localhost';
$db_port                = '3306';
$db_user                = 'powerdns';
$db_pass                = 'password';
$db_name                = 'powerdns';
$db_type                = 'mysql';
$session_key            = 'session_key';

Move PowerAdmin folder to Apache's DocumentRoot. We can use this droplet's IP address to manage our DNS settings

mv /root/poweradmin-2.1.6/* /var/www/html/
service httpd restart

Edit /etc/pdns/pdns.conf and add the following lines, make sure to modify gmysql-password to MySQL password you've selected in Step 2:

launch=gmysql
gmysql-host=localhost
gmysql-user=powerdns
gmysql-password=password
gmysql-dbname=powerdns

Restart Power DNS daemon:

service pdns restart

Step 5 - Create PowerAdmin Account

Proceed to installing PowerAdmin from webserver. Navigate over to your droplet's IP /install folder (in our case http://198.211.110.153/install/ ).

Create a Poweradmin admin account:

Next step is optional:

Finish the installation process, and after you get to Step 7, remove /var/www/html/install folder:

rm -rf /var/www/html/install

Now you can navigate to your droplet's IP ( http://198.211.110.153/ in our case), and login as admin with password you've specified in Step 5.

Now you can create your own DNS zone records:

You can verify that your new PowerDNS server is working by running dig against it:

dig @198.211.110.153 domain.com

;; ANSWER SECTION:
domain.com.             86400   IN      A       127.0.0.1

And you are all done!

By Bulat Khamitov

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About the authors

Bulat Khamitov

author

Developer and author at DigitalOcean.

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10 Comments

dedy • May 26, 2015

i was install pdns and pdns-backend-mysql, but while i type “dig @localhost” i got REFUSED., why?

Andrew SB • May 22, 2014

@labura: Sounds like you somehow missed installing pdns-backend-mysql:

<pre> yum install pdns-backend-mysql </pre>

labura • May 22, 2014

I found this Error in my /var/log/message… please help

May 22 15:22:37 ns-sec pdns[6337]: dnsbackend unable to load module in gmysql May 22 15:22:38 ns-sec pdns[6247]: Our pdns instance exited with code 1 May 22 15:22:38 ns-sec pdns[6247]: Respawning May 22 15:22:39 ns-sec pdns[6338]: Guardian is launching an instance May 22 15:22:39 ns-sec pdns[6338]: Reading random entropy from ‘/dev/urandom’ May 22 15:22:39 ns-sec pdns[6338]: Unable to load module ‘/usr/local/lib/libgmysqlbackend.so’: /usr/local/lib/libgmysqlbackend.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

labura • May 22, 2014

I’m having problem that my pdns won’t resolve any zone… but I could input zone to database.

ashish670069 • May 19, 2014

I followed your howto but cant get the answer while using “dig”. My installation gone smooth. Here I’m pasting some output. please check and guide me.

#dig @localhost domain.com A

; <<>> DiG 9.7.3-P3-RedHat-9.7.3-8.P3.el6 <<>> @localhost aruhat.com ; (2 servers found) ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 41627 ;; flags: qr aa rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0 ;; WARNING: recursion requested but not available

;; QUESTION SECTION: ;aruhat.com. IN A

;; AUTHORITY SECTION: aruhat.com. 3600 IN SOA 2014051900. 28800. 7200 604800 86400 604800 3600

;; Query time: 0 msec ;; SERVER: 127.0.0.1#53(127.0.0.1) ;; WHEN: Mon May 19 16:30:47 2014 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 79

#PDNS monitoring

[root@ldap ~]# /etc/init.d/pdns monitor May 19 16:33:25 Reading random entropy from ‘/dev/urandom’ May 19 16:33:25 This is module gmysqlbackend.so reporting May 19 16:33:25 This is a standalone pdns May 19 16:33:25 UDP server bound to 0.0.0.0:53 May 19 16:33:25 TCP server bound to 0.0.0.0:53 May 19 16:33:25 PowerDNS Authoritative Server 3.3.1 (jenkins@autotest.powerdns.com) © 2001-2013 PowerDNS.COM BV May 19 16:33:25 Using 64-bits mode. Built on 20131217194128 by mockbuild@, gcc 4.4.7 20120313 (Red Hat 4.4.7-4). May 19 16:33:25 PowerDNS comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it according to the terms of the GPL version 2. May 19 16:33:25 Set effective group id to 490 May 19 16:33:25 Set effective user id to 495 May 19 16:33:25 Creating backend connection for TCP May 19 16:33:25 Master/slave communicator launching May 19 16:33:25 gmysql Connection successful. Connected to database ‘powerdns’ on ‘localhost’. May 19 16:33:25 gmysql Connection successful. Connected to database ‘powerdns’ on ‘localhost’. % May 19 16:33:25 About to create 3 backend threads for UDP May 19 16:33:25 gmysql Connection successful. Connected to database ‘powerdns’ on ‘localhost’. May 19 16:33:25 gmysql Connection successful. Connected to database ‘powerdns’ on ‘localhost’. May 19 16:33:25 No new unfresh slave domains, 0 queued for AXFR already May 19 16:33:25 No master domains need notifications May 19 16:33:25 gmysql Connection successful. Connected to database ‘powerdns’ on ‘localhost’. May 19 16:33:25 gmysql Connection successful. Connected to database ‘powerdns’ on ‘localhost’. May 19 16:33:25 gmysql Connection successful. Connected to database ‘powerdns’ on ‘localhost’. May 19 16:33:25 gmysql Connection successful. Connected to database ‘powerdns’ on ‘localhost’. May 19 16:33:25 gmysql Connection successful. Connected to database ‘powerdns’ on ‘localhost’. May 19 16:33:25 gmysql Connection successful. Connected to database ‘powerdns’ on ‘localhost’. May 19 16:33:25 Done launching threads, ready to distribute questions

ashish670069 • May 19, 2014

I followed your howto but cant get the answer while using “dig”. My installation gone smooth. Here I’m pasting some output. please check and guide me.

#dig @localhost domain.com A

;; QUESTION SECTION: ;aruhat.com. IN A

;; AUTHORITY SECTION: aruhat.com. 3600 IN SOA 2014051900. 28800. 7200 604800 86400 604800 3600

;; Query time: 0 msec ;; SERVER: 127.0.0.1#53(127.0.0.1) ;; WHEN: Mon May 19 16:30:47 2014 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 79

#PDNS monitoring

Edward Richmond • April 6, 2014

I’m getting stuck when asked to start mysql, for some reason I’m getting access denied errors. Please see the error below:

[root@ns1 ~]# mysql ERROR 1045 (28000): Access denied for user ‘root’@‘localhost’ (using password: NO) [root@ns1 ~]# mysql -p Enter password: ERROR 1045 (28000): Access denied for user ‘root’@‘localhost’ (using password: YES) [root@ns1 ~]# mysql -u -p ERROR 1045 (28000): Access denied for user ‘-p’@‘localhost’ (using password: NO) [root@ns1 ~]# mysql ERROR 1045 (28000): Access denied for user ‘root’@‘localhost’ (using password: NO)

Any idea how to solve this? I’d love to get this up and running asap.

cetanu • November 8, 2013

Nevermind. There was a type in my pdns.conf. slaps self

cetanu • November 8, 2013

This tutorial is good, except for some reason PDNS refuses to listen on port 53… Any ideas?

rasho • September 26, 2013

thanks for this tutorials